Deerfield
About Deerfield

Launched in 1994, Deerfield Management Company is an investment firm dedicated to advancing healthcare through information, investment, and philanthropy—all toward the end goal of cures for disease, improved quality of life, and reduced cost of care.

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Investment

Supporting companies across the healthcare ecosystem with flexible funding models…

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Information

Delivering market research to the Deerfield team, its portfolio companies and other partners.

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Philanthropy

A New York City-based not-for-profit devoted to advancing innovative health care initiatives.

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Portfolio Companies

Deerfield generally maintains a combined portfolio of more than 150 private and public investments across the life science, medical device, diagnostic, digital health and health service industries at all stages of evolution from start-up to mature company.

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Research Collaborations

Deerfield partners with leading academic research centers, providing critical funding and expertise to further sustain and accelerate the commercialization of discoveries toward meaningful societal impact by advancing cures for disease.

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Strategic Partners

As a strategic partner, Deerfield offers capital, scientific expertise, business operating support, and unique access to innovation.

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Deerfield Foundation

The Deerfield Foundation is a New York City-based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to improve health, accelerate innovation and promote human equity.

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Cure Campus

Cure is a 12-story innovations campus in New York City that intends to bring together innovators from academia, government, industry, and the not-for-profit sectors to advance human health and accelerate the fight against disease.

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Cure Programming

Cure has a series of expert lectures intended to advance thought in healthcare, management, innovation, policy, and other relevant subjects. This fosters growth and education for those at Cure and its guests.

Events at the Cure

Deerfield Management Completes Acquisition of Adeptus Health

New York, New York – October 2, 2017 – Deerfield Management announces its acquisition of reorganized Adeptus Health and commits to a long-term partnership that builds upon the delivery of high quality, expeditious emergency care at fair costs to communities nationwide.  Deerfield is a 23-year-old healthcare investment firm focused on advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy. With a customized strategy and collaborative team process, Deerfield will expand the value of this partnership beyond capital to seek an evolved healthcare service paradigm that better aligns with patient and industry needs.

Adeptus is a leader in emergency care delivering excellent patient experiences.   Its team has a proven ability to identify, purchase, build, equip, stock and operate new locations while also integrating its model within hospital networks to improve patient outcomes, lowering cost to the healthcare system and leveraging other network assets for partners.   Its unique site model and ability to staff locations, provides a strengthened alignment between clinicians and Adeptus’s practices.

The collaboration between the Adeptus team and Deerfield’s investment, operational and market research teams, will allow the company to seek continuous improvement and innovation in their freestanding, and fully equipped emergency rooms.  Together, we plan to further integrate within hospital networks, to ultimately increase the accessibility of quality of care to patients and provide momentum for healthcare’s future in value based payment models.

“Deerfield is excited to join with the Adeptus team in its mission to provide the highest quality medical care both in the communities currently served and those we will endeavor to serve in the future,” stated Alex Karnal, Partner and Portfolio Manager at Deerfield Management Company. “The Adeptus team has proven its resiliency, creativity, and close connection through this difficult time and I am excited for them to get back to what they do best, caring for patients.”

Adeptus has been and will remain a first line of defense for emergency care, delivering high quality outcomes and convenient access to the communities it serves.  While patient care will remain in the hands of the board-certified physicians and emergency trained registered nurses administering treatment, Deerfield will provide oversight and support to leverage Adeptus’ work to new markets, with a continued commitment to the quality of patient care for families, neighbors and employees in its communities.

Immediately following the emergence from bankruptcy, Frank Williams, who had served as the Chief Financial Officer of Adeptus Health Inc. (dissolved in connection with the reorganization) was appointed the new Chief Executive Officer at reorganized Adeptus.  While Gregory W. Scott, formerly the Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer of Adeptus Health Inc., was appointed the new Executive Chairman at Adeptus.  Both Mr. Williams and Mr. Scott will continue to leverage their vast leadership experience to strengthen and grow the business forward. 

“We are excited to collaborate with Deerfield,” remarked Mr. Williams.  “Through leveraging Deerfield’s operational expertise, data analytics and expansion capital, we could potentially grow into 1 to 2 new markets per year, greatly expanding our network of care over the next five years to match patient demand.”

About Adeptus

Adeptus Health is a leading patient-centered healthcare organization expanding access to the highest quality emergency medical care through its network of freestanding emergency rooms and partnerships with premier healthcare providers. For more information, please visit www.adpt.com.

About Deerfield

Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.

For more information, please visit www.deerfield.com

Contacts

Deerfield Management Company
Karen Heidelberger, 212-551-1600
[email protected]

Adeptus Health and Deerfield Join Forces to Enable High Quality Emergency Care

New York, New York – April 19, 2017 – Deerfield Management announced its plan to acquire Adeptus Health with a long-term commitment to the delivery of high quality, efficient emergency care.  Deerfield is a 23 year-old firm focused on advancing healthcare through investment, information, and philanthropy.  With over $8 billion in assets, and industry leading investment, operations, and market research teams, Deerfield brings to Adeptus highly relevant expertise in addition to expansion capital. 

“Adeptus is uniquely positioned to change the healthcare services delivery paradigm by providing access to emergency care in settings that are both efficient and of the highest quality, “ stated Jim Flynn, Managing Partner of Deerfield Management. “This is of increasing importance as healthcare systems evolve to meet the demands of patients.  Our goal is to be the best provider we can be on behalf of our hospital venture partners and the communities we serve.”

“We are excited about partnering with Deerfield to help us continue caring for our patients and improving our business.  Deerfield brings a flexible combination of expertise, capital and a passion for quality healthcare that offers the potential to fundamentally elevate our business,” stated Gregory W. Scott, Chairman & Interim Chief Executive Officer of Adeptus Health. 

Adeptus has been and will remain the first line of defense for emergency healthcare, with high quality outcomes and convenient access for all the families, neighbors, and employees in its communities.   Adeptus will strive to serve its many constituencies by delivering an excellent patient experience, fostering a well-supported work environment and engaging collaboratively with its hospital partners to improve local healthcare communities.  The facilities are innovative, freestanding, and fully-equipped emergency rooms with state of the art diagnostic technology (CT Scanners, Ultrasound, and Digital X-ray) and on-site labs. Furthermore, each facility is staffed with board-certified physicians and emergency trained registered nurses.

The consummation of Deerfield’s acquisition of Adeptus is subject to customary conditions, including bankruptcy court approval of Adeptus Health’s plan of reorganization.

About Adeptus

Adeptus Health (NYSE:ADPT) is a leading patient-centered healthcare organization expanding access to the highest quality emergency medical care through its network of freestanding emergency rooms and partnerships with premier healthcare providers. For more information, please visit www.adpt.com.

About Deerfield

Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.

For more information, please visit www.deerfield.com

Contacts

Deerfield Management Company
Karen Heidelberger, 212-692-7140
[email protected]

Deerfield Management Company Completes Sale of Veterinary Practice Partners to Pamlico Capital

New York, NY, August 1, 2016 – Deerfield Management Company (Deerfield) has completed the sale of its portfolio company, Veterinary Practice Partners (VPP), to Pamlico Capital (Pamlico). VPP is a rapidly growing veterinary practice management company with a differentiated, co-ownership model that leads to a unique set of acquisition opportunities and promotes deep ongoing engagement from its veterinary partners. Deerfield founded VPP in partnership with its Chief Executive Officer, Rich Lester, in 2011. The company has grown through acquisitions and de novo development to a portfolio of 22 clinics in 9 states. 

Leslie Henshaw, Partner at Deerfield, commented “Rich Lester and his team have built an exceptional platform with a demonstrated ability to help their veterinary partners grow the value of their practices in a collaborative fashion and with aligned interests. We believe this distinctive model positions the company well for many years of continued growth, and we look forward to watching Rich and his team build on the successful foundation we established together.”

Rich Lester, VPP’s CEO, noted “Deerfield has been a tremendous partner in helping the management team build the company and execute on my vision. Not only did they serve as a source of capital and management guidance, but they provided valuable operating support as the executive team was being built out. Most importantly, their proprietary, in-house research arm, The Deerfield Institute, was instrumental in executing a lead generation strategy to source  acquisition opportunities and collect market insights that helped to position us as a recognized thought leader in the industry.”

Harris Williams & Co. served as an advisor to VPP in the context of this transaction.

About Veterinary Practice Partners

Veterinary Practice Partners (VPP) is a trusted business partner to veterinarians. We co-own practices in partnership with veterinarians, and work relentlessly to grow and manage each practice, while retaining its unique identity and culture. VPP’s family of practices has enjoyed industry-leading growth and profitability improvements. Our team has deep experience in driving sustained, above-average revenue growth, cultivating exceptional practice staff, and overseeing back-office operations, including marketing, finance, accounting and human resources. Veterinarians partner with us because we enable them to focus on delivering high-quality patient care and foster lasting relationships with pet owners, while remaining owners in the practices they have committed a lifetime to building.

About Deerfield

Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.

For more information, please visit www.deerfield.com

Contacts

Deerfield Management Company
Karen Heidelberger, 212-692-7140
[email protected]

Electronic Health Records – On The Cusp Of Shedding Its Awkward Adolescence

In 2009, in connection with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, the government set aside over $30 billion to promote the implementation and use of electronic health records (EHR).  The policy objectives at the time encompassed a number of goals including: (1) improving the quality, safety and efficiency of care delivery; (2) engaging patients more fully in their care; (3) improving care coordination; (4) establishing an improved foundation for population health management; and (5) ensuring appropriate security protection for personal health information.  Notwithstanding the good intent, significant dollar investment and focused encouragement associated with this initiative, EHR adoption, and its presumed benefits, have been slower than expected to emerge.   Seven years and multi billions of dollars later the jury remains out.

On the one hand, great strides have been made in the number of physicians using an EHR.  The percentage of

providers reporting implementation of at least a basic system has doubled since HITECH was passed, and now stands at just over 80%.  On the other hand, it remains highly equivocal as to whether this expanded adoption has improved patient care, enhanced patient and physician satisfaction, or generated promised cost savings.  For each of these questions, a quick Google search finds a myriad of conflicting statistics, opinions, and anecdotes, providing ample “evidence” to pronounce HITECH either a resounding failure or an undeniable success.

Rather than weigh in on either side of this debate, or offer what is likely a premature assessment of ultimate potential, I would instead like to flag several areas of both early success as well as concern, and to highlight several future areas of currently unlocked promise.  In the area of clear wins, the percentage of physicians e-prescribing via an EHR grew from 7% pre-HITECH to over 70% by the end of 2014.  This is important because compared to paper or fax, e-prescribing has been shown to enhance medication safety by improving prescribing accuracy and reducing adverse drug events, and to reduce medication cost through higher generic dispensing rates and more informed drug selection.  Similarly, rates of compliance regarding the provision of preventive care and the ordering of recommended vaccinations and lab tests have improved, as has physicians’ ability to access patient charts remotely and share information for consults and referrals.

In the concern column, physicians have consistently suffered from productivity drops ranging from 25-33% in the initial phases of EHR implementation and many maintain they have been unable to regain their pre-EHR level of efficiency.  EHRs have also introduced new security vulnerabilities despite significant focus on patient privacy protections.

Trends in EHR Physician Penetration Rates
Source: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Adapted from HealthIT.gov

More tangentially, providers have expressed concern that the introduction of EHRs into the exam room has detracted from patient-physician interaction and actually reduced the amount of time a physician spends engaged in patient conversation. 

This concern, while more pronounced among providers than patients, has even led to the emergence of medical scribes to enter information into the EHR while the doctor interacts with the patient.

Thus, we see the EHR industry continuing to progress, but not without growing pains.  As we look ahead, we expect the balance to continue to shift in a positive direction as concerns are addressed and benefits enhanced.  We see enormous potential in the area of improved patient engagement.  EHRs are highly effective at capturing in-person encounters, but as care expands beyond the walls of the exam room, capturing and tracking what happens between visits will be critical in navigating the transition to population health management and value-based care.  A recent industry survey of 500 insured consumers who use mobile/internet-connected health tools revealed that despite the wide-spread adoption of EHRs, 55% of users view them as tools to simply “stay informed.”  We need to see the pivot of EHRs from providers of information to triggers of action.

Similarly, we see EHRs as a powerful new tool to transform clinical research and public health.    Although the healthcare sector has historically trailed other industries such as banking and retail in the use of big data, the richness of information now captured within EHRs holds tremendous promise.  New tools are being developed to use EHR data to identify clinical trial candidates, detect disease triggers, validate best treatment regimens, and flag public health threats.   Evidenced based medicine, driven by the aggregation of individual data sets and big data algorithms, is starting to get traction and physicians are gaining the ability to assess the likely result of potential treatment alternatives based on data from other patients with the same condition, genetic factors, and underlying traits.  Pharma companies are using new datasets and tools to help design trials and identify potential trial participants, and we have already seen that EHR data in combination with historical patterns of flu activity and machine learning algorithms can provide a novel way of monitoring infectious diseases at the national and local level. 

EHRs clearly have the potential to touch multiple aspects of healthcare and while change is rarely easy or without unintended consequences, we are confident that EHRs will ultimately improve the cost and quality of care in this country.  Achieving these results will require continued collaboration between public and private sectors and ongoing commitment to capturing, standardizing, and integrating the vast array of data generated by patients, providers, payors, employers, and even social media.  Providers will need to continue to refine the way in which EHRs are assimilated into their workflow and, most importantly, they and other channel participants will need to learn how to put the new insights enabled by EHRs into practice.

Deerfield Announces Partnership with Recovery Centers of America

Deerfield Announces a Partnership with Recovery Centers of America and Provides $231.5 Million in Start-up Financing

NEW YORK, NY – December 14, 2015 – Deerfield Management Company, L.P. announces a partnership with Recovery Centers of America (RCA) to build a leading addiction and behavioral healthcare treatment company. Deerfield has committed $231.5 million to fund the development or purchase of eight treatment campuses in the Northeast United States that will provide a comprehensive continuum of integrated care.

RCA was founded to transform addiction and behavioral treatment by emphasizing clinically validated treatment approaches delivered in supportive environments designed to incorporate regular involvement by family and friends. This is a revolutionary change from today’s care paradigm that too frequently relies on a patient leaving their community for treatment, which separates them from their support network and exposes them to needless gaps in care as they transition back to lower settings of care. The management team’s unique blend of real estate, clinical, operational and marketing expertise provides an experienced platform for delivering on this vision.

Deerfield’s capital commitment will enable RCA to purchase or develop at least eight integrated campuses that will include an estimated 1,200 inpatient beds by the end of 2017. The financing is structured on a milestone basis that allows RCA to move forward in a meaningful fashion with access to capital at needed junctures along its development path.

“We are excited to have Deerfield as our partner in building a solution to help alleviate the domestic epidemic that is gripping our nation,” stated Brian O’Neill, founder and CEO of Recovery Centers of America. “Deerfield has proven to be an exceptional partner in launching our company, serving as both a creative source of capital as well as a trusted adviser helping us to refine our operational and growth strategy.”

“Finding a solution for the exploding number of individuals racked by addiction is a healthcare imperative that we are passionate about, and we quickly recognized RCA as an innovative organization with the potential to change the progression and trajectory of this crisis. We believe that RCA is uniquely suited for delivering tangible benefits to patients, families and payors alike, and we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to deploy our capital and supportive services to help build these capabilities,” said Leslie Henshaw, Partner at Deerfield Management.

About RCA

Based in King of Prussia, PA, Recovery Centers of America is committed to advocating for some 22.7 million Americans suffering from behavioral health and substance use disorders. The company, which is opening treatment centers throughout the Northeast, is transforming the way treatment is delivered in an industry in desperate need of change. Recovery Centers of America’s neighborhood-based Centers for Addiction Medicine are designed based on the latest scientific research that indicates sustained recovery is more likely when patients stay connected to and supported by family and friends, while building other, on going support networks. By allowing patients to receive treatment in an atmosphere more akin to a college campus with Starbucks-like appeal, Recovery Centers of America helps overcome the stigma of addiction and its treatment, which is essential to meaningful recovery.

For more information visit www.recoverycentersofamerica.com

About Deerfield

Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.For more information, please visit www.deerfield.com

Contacts

Deerfield Management Company
Karen Heidelberger, 212-692-7140
[email protected]